To Live
by Ghanaperu
Summary: "I think I'm crying, but I can't hear anything. I can't breathe either, or move at all. Everything is blackness, and pain, and utter loneliness. Is this what dying feels like?" Spike, in the minutes after his world explodes. [Spoilers for One Wrong Move.] Second chapter is Sam, sitting in the silence of lost innocence and wondering how to get hope back.
1. To Die

_[I didn't know losing you would break me_

_this must be what dying feels like]_

_Rebecca Lynn Howard, What Dying Feels Like_

I think I'm crying, but I can't hear anything. I can't breathe either, or move at all. Everything is blackness, and pain, and utter loneliness. Is this what dying feels like?

But the darkness of this world is suddenly shattered, and light floods my eyes. It hurts, and I want it to stop but I can't make the words come out. I gasp for breath, and my hearing returns. Now I hear myself, and I'm scared. I'm screaming, crying and gasping and choking on my own sobs - and I don't know why. Why!

I bring my hands up to cover my face, and discover that I am kneeling. I'm kneeling all alone on cold cement. Where are my friends? What has happened?!

My questions are drowned in pain then, but I can feel arms around me. Somebody is here, keeping me safe. It doesn't help though, and I am still sobbing. I remember that my world has just fallen apart, but I don't know how. I have to stop crying and help! That's what I do - I help people. Somebody needs my help. Let me go. Let me go!

I think I scream the words, because now I hear a voice. He's saying "it's gonna be okay" but his voice breaks halfway through and I can't even believe how much that hurts. I know the voice. That voice is safety, and strength, and love - but now he's crying too and I know for certain that something terrible has happened. Something irreversible, and devastating.

My tears are slowing down simply because I've run out, but the pain isn't lessening at all. I cling to the arms that are holding me, thinking that maybe if I hold on tight enough I will be safe.

Awareness returns, slowly. As slowly as it comes, I see again what happened. I see the mine, and his face, and the looks of defeat on the others'. I see the tears in his eyes, and I see the trembling of his muscles and I know that this is the end. I know. But I turn my back anyway, and my imagination has to fill in what happens next.

I look up now, into Boss's face. He doesn't loosen his hold, and I am inordinately grateful for that. He is crying too, small tears spilling over onto his cheeks. "Breathe," he whispers. "Just breathe." I wonder if he is talking to me or to himself.

Sam comes over, with flames of anger squeezing his fists closed. There is something else in his eyes though, something like sorrow. "We have to go." he says, gesturing to the small crowd that is gathering. Boss nods, and helps me up. We walk together, side by side, to the truck. The others follow, Jules still crying quietly and Wordy wiping tears from his own eyes. Ed is stony-faced, stalking up to tell Boss that he will stay and coordinate things here. Boss nods, and then the rest of us get in the truck and drive away.

We drive away.

Yes, this is what dying feels like.


	2. Silence

_[well I say faith is a burden_

_it's a weight to bear_

_and hope is hard to hold to]_

_Andrew Peterson, No More Faith_

It takes us fifteen minutes to get back to the SRU, and Spike speaks for none of us.

Boss drives, because he is the only one he trusts to. I think he should have let me - but he needs to feel like he is keeping us safe now, and driving the car we're in is a small way he can do that.

Jules is in the front seat next to him, so that leaves me and Wordy and Spike in the back. And all of us are silent, but it is a different kind of silence for everyone.

I am deadly silent, with fury radiating off me. Today should not have happened, and it is a sick sort of irony that I left Afghanistan only to have my friends blown up here too.

Wordy is silent and sad, defeat and regret lacing his posture. His silence is the healthy kind, the kind that will allow him to grieve properly and then move on. I could almost hate him for that, if there was any room in my heart for more hate.

Spike is in a shocked silence, the kind of silence that really only happens once in a lifetime. It is the silence of the road away from innocence, the silence of horror at what the world can be. I was silent like that once, but that was a long time ago.

Boss is silent because there is nothing to say. He is a negotiator first, and he knows better than any of us when words - any words - will be wasted words. Later he will talk, but for now he will let us have our silence; and I'm grateful for that.

Jules is silent because she thinks she's supposed to be strong. She's spent a lifetime proving herself in a world of men; and the lessons she's pounded into herself for so long are not easily forgotten. Strong people don't lose it in front of their teammates - so she will hold it together until later.

Ed is angry like me, but he isn't here in the car with us. He will be coming to join us for debriefing soon, but for now he is back at the university, taking care of...things. And somehow it's easier to have two members of our team missing from the car, instead of just one. I wonder if it makes it any easier for Spike.

Spike will be the measure of this, the one we look to whenever someone asks how we are coping. It is all of our loss, but it is his loss first - and none of us will ever forget that.

I look at him and he looks back, and I know he doesn't see pity in my eyes. I don't pity him. I envy him, mostly because he made it this far before losing his innocence. I envy him for being able to see the good in the world, even in the world he sees. I envy him for his firm grasp on hope, and his endless optimism.

But right now, the only thing in his eyes is an emptiness, and it scares me. The team needs him to recover from this as the same person he's always been, because if even Spike loses hope, then we're done for. I reach over and pat his shoulder, trying to help him remember Lew's last words. They were words only for Spike, because we all know Spike is the one who carries the hope of the team. Lew had to die, but he gave the last gift he had to Spike - and this is what it was: hope.

Maybe someday he'll understand why Lew gave it to him and no one else; and maybe someday he'll be able to accept it.

But for now, we have lost our hope.


End file.
